Psalms 24:7-10

24:7 Look up, ¹  you gates!

Rise up, ²  you eternal doors!

Then the majestic king ³  will enter! ⁴ 

24:8 Who is this majestic king? ⁵ 

The Lord who is strong and mighty!

The Lord who is mighty in battle!

24:9 Look up, you gates!

Rise up, you eternal doors!

Then the majestic king will enter!

24:10 Who is this majestic king?

The Lord who commands armies! ⁶ 

He is the majestic king! (Selah)

The Song of Songs 3:4

3:4 Scarcely ⁷  had I passed them by

when I found my beloved!

I held onto him ⁸  tightly and would not let him go ⁹ 

until I brought him to my mother’s house, ¹⁰ 

to the bedroom chamber ¹¹  of the one who conceived me.

Matthew 14:32-33

14:32 When they went up into the boat, the wind ceased. 14:33 Then those who were in the boat worshiped him, saying, “Truly you are the Son of God.”

Mark 6:51

6:51 Then he went up with them into the boat, and the wind ceased. They were completely astonished,

Revelation 3:20

3:20 Listen! ¹²  I am standing at the door and knocking! If anyone hears my voice and opens the door I will come into his home ¹³  and share a meal with him, and he with me.

[24:7]  ¹ tn Heb “lift up your heads.” The gates of the Lord’s dwelling place are here personified. The idiom “lift up the head” often means “be confident, bold” (see Judg 8:28; Job 10:15; Ps 83:2; Zech 1:21).

[24:7]  ² tn Heb “lift yourselves up.”

[24:7]  ³ tn Or “king of glory.”

[24:7]  ⁴ tn Following the imperatives of the preceding lines, the prefixed verbal form with vav (ו) conjunctive indicates purpose or result.

[24:8]  ⁵ sn Who is this majestic king? Perhaps the personified gates/doors ask this question, in response to the command given in v. 7.

[24:10]  ⁶ tn Traditionally, “the Lord of hosts,” a title which here pictures the Lord as a mighty warrior-king who leads armies into battle.

[3:4]  ⁷ tn Heb “like a little.” The term כִּמְעַט (kim’at), which is composed of the comparative preposition כְּ (kÿ, “like”) prefixed to the noun מְעַט (mÿ’at, “the small, the little, the few”), is an idiom that means “within a little” or “scarcely” (BDB 590 s.v. מְעַט b.2.a).

[3:4]  ⁸ tn Heb “I held him” (אֲחַזְתִּיו, ’akhaztiv). The term אָחַז (’akhaz, “grasp”) denotes to forcefully seize someone to avoid losing hold of him (BDB 28 s.v. אָחַז b).

[3:4]  ⁹ tn The verb רָפָה (rafah, “to let go”) means to relax one’s grip on an object or a person (HALOT 1276-77 s.v. רפה; BDB 952 s.v. רָפָה 2). The Hiphil stem means “to let loose” (Job 7:19; 27:6; Song 3:4; Sir 6:27) or “to release from one’s hands” (Deut 9:14; Josh 10:6; Ps 37:8). The negative expression לֹא רָפָה (lo’ rafah, “to not let [someone or something] go”) denotes an intense desire or effort to not lose possession of someone or something (Job 27:6; Prov 4:13). Here the expression וְלֹא אַרְפֶּנּוּ (vÿlo’ ’arpennu, “I would not let him go”) pictures her determination to hold on to him so she would not lose him again. The shift from a suffix-conjugation (perfect) אֲחַזְתִּיו (’akhaztiv, “I grasped him”) to a prefix-conjugation (imperfect) אַרְפֶּנּוּ (’arpennu, “I would [not] let him go”) depicts a shift from a completed/consummative action (perfect: she took hold of his hand) to an ongoing/progressive action (imperfect: she would not let go of it). A basic distinction between the perfect and imperfect tenses is that of consummative versus progressive action. The literary/syntactical structure of אֲחַזְתִּיו וְלֹא אַרְפֶּנּוּ (“I grasped him and I would not let him go”) in 3:4 mirrors that of בִּקַּשְׁתִּיו וְלֹא מְצָאתִיו (biqqashtiv vÿlo’ mÿtsa’tiv, “I searched for him but I could not find him”) in 3:1-2. This parallelism in the literary and syntactical structure emphasizes the fortunate reversal of situation.

[3:4]  ¹⁰ sn There is debate about the reason why the woman brought her beloved to her mother’s house. Campbell notes that the mother’s house is sometimes referred to as the place where marital plans were made (Gen 24:28; Ruth 1:8). Some suggest, then, that the woman here was unusually bold and took the lead in proposing marriage plans with her beloved. This approach emphasizes that the marriage plans in 3:4 are followed by the royal wedding procession (3:6-11) and the wedding night (4:1-5:1). On the other hand, others suggest that the parallelism of “house of my mother” and “chamber of she who conceived me” focuses on the bedroom of her mother’s house. Fields suggests that her desire was to make love to her beloved in the very bedroom chambers where she herself was conceived, to complete the cycle of life/love. If this is the idea, it would provide a striking parallel to a similar picture in 8:5 in which the woman exults that they had made love in the very location where her beloved had been conceived: “Under the apple tree I aroused you; it was there your mother conceived you, there she who bore you conceived you.”

[3:4]  ¹¹ tn The term חֶדֶר (kheder, “chamber”) literally means “dark room” (HALOT s.v. חֶדֶר 293) and often refers to a bedroom (Gen 43:30; Exod 7:28; Judg 3:24; 15:1; 16:9, 12; 2 Sam 4:7; 13:10; 1Kgs 1:15; 2 Kgs 6:12; 9:2; Eccl 10:20; Isa 26:20; Joel 2:16; Prov 24:4; Song 1:4; 3:4).

[3:20]  ¹² tn Grk “Behold.”

[3:20]  ¹³ tn Grk “come in to him.”